It seems to me the ARIA is stuck between Scylla and Charybdis. There is
no good solution. The question is only which is least bad. I personally
don't know the answer to that. My gut is to prefer namespaces, but there
are some very good practical arguments against that.
It seems to me that the problem is primarily caused by attempting to
shoehorn modular specs (ARIA) into a monolithic vocabulary (HTML).
Similar problems have surfaced with the efforts to merge SVG and MathML
into HTML. I increasingly don't think this will work. One of two
plausible choices needs to be made:
1. Accept that HTML is monolithic. Merge ARIA into the core HTML spec,
or incorporate it by reference. Make an ARIA attribute programmatically
no different than class or style or id. ARIA is just a part of HTML 5,
and provides no support for other host languages.
2. Modularize HTML. Require XHTML. Provide no ARIA (or SVG, or MathML)
support in classic HTML. If you want that, you must use well-formed XHTML.
I'm not sure the community has the will to make either of these choices;
but if they don't ARIA, SVG, and MathML are all likely to fail. :-(
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/